Preaching To The Homeless

This past Friday I had the opportunity to speak at a local Rescue Mission in York, PA. It was an amazing night. We took our youth worship team to lead and minister thru a human video. The students were brilliant, sharing their gifts and love for Jesus in a very different environment then what they are used to. Some of the girls got heckled walking into the mission too.

This was definitely not church.

But the Holy Spirit still showed up.

It was my second time speaking at the rescue mission. The first time I spoke I will be honest, I did not put a lot of effort into the message. It was a message I spoke before at a nursing home. Yeah, you can see where my heart was. (I am not a fan of recycled messages either)

The first night I went was still moving, just to be able to serve food to the less fortunate and give back with some of our youth and other members of our church is such a high. However...I got convicted big time. Not because of the high, it was legit, no drugs here. I got convicted because I looked at the Mission as people who did not deserve my best as a Pastor.

God spoke to my heart, in the only way He can.

"Be yourself and put the effort into it like you would if it was a sunday morning."

That hit me.

I prepared differently this time. I spent they day preparing my message and studying the scriptures. I spoke about Rocky, I spoke about Jesus, I spoke about "Going The Distance."

I rolled up with a projector and my MacBook Pro ready to rock some multimedia. Hey, God said be myself, so I felt safe to bring the techno goodies.

I think they dug the Keynote presentation and the movie clips...but I think Holy Spirit did more than my Mac ever could.

There was a solid response to the alter call.

One person actually responded to the call of salvation.

His name was Kevin.

After the message, he came up to me and shared that his father passed away last year and his sister passed away this year. He continued to say that tonight he saw the Light. Amazing.

I got to sit down with him later on during the meal (spaghetti and meatballs never tasted so good).

I learned a little more about Kevin and he shared that his wife is Assemblies of God but he is not (maybe that will change). He is unemployed and a New York transplant looking for a job. We talked about Italian food, he calls the sauce, gravy too. See Im not the only one. It's definitely a Philly and New York thing...ha ha. We were definitely getting along like two pizans. We had a good time.

It was worth it putting the time into the service for the Rescue Mission.

It was worth it for Kevin.